Tuesday, April 15, 2014

On the Future of Cape Breton - A Free Advice From 2014

Dear Cape Breton;

I saw a brief tweet from a Conservative politician last week, asking if Cape Breton is open for business or not. I mean wide open. And I did cringe, because I have come to distrust the Conservative notion of economy.

In my experience, it favours business and not community, it favours progress at the expense of belonging. It opens the door to the the likes of the Koch Brothers, to dump another slag pile in the community or to develop recreational centres that the locals cannot afford to attend.

I no longer live there, I still love it. And I have another idea that might be a little more interesting than privatizing everything and turning the place into a rich bitch's playground/dumping ground.

I envision Cape Breton as an Independent Information Haven for Data Warehousing. Keep the TPP and SOPA, corporations and all the regulators out. Make privacy and open internet the motto and operational guides. You will have success beyond your imagination.

Why Cape Breton? Because it is the only place in the whole country that has the legislative framework to set this up and make it work. Dust it off and get going.

Oh, and get rid of the vested interest before you and your family no longer own your piece of heaven and are left to visit an online file of good times past. On a server, in some other country.